Liberal-NDP coalition could be a credible future alternative: Ignatieff

A Liberal-NDP coalition government to end the Conservative Party’s reign could be a viable option in the future, says former Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.

In a new book, Ignatieff opens the door to an arrangement he once spurned.

“Some day in the years ahead, a realignment bringing together Liberals from the centre and the New Democrats from the left might well offer Canadians a credible alternative to the long Conservative hegemony,” Ignatieff writes in Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics.

“But it wasn’t there in December 2008, and it couldn’t be conjured out of a hat and sold to the Canadian people just months after an election in which they had sent the Conservatives back to Ottawa with more seats.”

Ignatieff also suggested he has warmed to the prospect of coalitions in a tweet Monday to promote his book.

“Coalition – Why it was wrong in 2008 and why it might be right in the future,” he wrote.

Ignatieff’s openness to the prospect of a future coalition is in sharp contrast to his actions in 2008 when former Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion reached a deal with former New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government and form a possible coalition propped up by Gilles Duceppe’s sovereignist Bloc Québécois.

Ignatieff describes in his book how he fought the proposed coalition from within caucus. When he inherited the leadership from Dion, Ignatieff refused to entertain the idea of a coalition despite overtures from Layton and a secret breakfast meeting with Jean Chrétien during which the former prime minister urged him to consider it.

“You have to listen carefully to a man who won three majority mandates in a row, but I was surprised at his lack of concern about the problem of legitimacy,” Ignatieff wrote. “He seemed to assume the Canadian public would simply roll over and accept a coalition between parties that had once been sworn enemies. I simply disagreed.”

Now, Ignatieff acknowledges that when he passed up the prospect of leading a coalition, he also passed up his chance to become Canada’s prime minister.

“I turned down the coalition, not knowing that as I did so, I had just given up my one chance to be the prime minister of my country.”

Ignatieff, who lost not only the election but his own seat in the 2011 election following a punishing series of attack ads run by the Conservatives for nearly two years, also calls for tougher rules to ban political advertising in between elections.

“I’d go still further and ban political advertising outside election time in order to put a stop to the permanent campaign that alienates voters and diverts governments from governing,” wrote Ignatieff, defending Canada’s election spending limits and requirements to report political contributions to Elections Canada.

“I want to liberate politicians from the pressures of big money as well as the drive-by smears by third-party advocacy groups. Let them make their case by all means but don’t let them use raw money power to bludgeon us all on the airwaves.”

In the case of the worst advertising lies, Ignatieff says there should be more recourse to libel suits.

In his book, which appears to be written with an international audience in mind, Ignatieff also calls on the United States to consider putting caps on election spending, saying the influence of money in U.S. election campaigns is corrupting the original intention of the First Amendment right to free speech.

“That process of corruption is well advanced, it seems to me, and a return to virtue is overdue, regulated, if no other solution is possible, by a strengthened federal elections commission with the power to require public disclosure of ever dollar that goes into politics.”

However, Ignatieff says Canada’s model is “unlikely” to be the right one for the U.S.

In a very personal, often blunt, book sprinkled with references to political philosophers, Ignatieff paints a sometimes depressing picture of the state of Canada’s democracy and the skills needed to be successful in politics. However, he also urges prospective politicians not to give up on politics and to learn from his own mistakes.

One mistake, Ignatieff says, would be to underestimate Stephen Harper.

“He is not prime minister for nothing: he has tenacity, discipline and ruthlessness in spades. He conveys the impression of having fixed and steady convictions, when in fact he is prepared to jettison any policy when it suits him.”

Ignatieff confirms what many had known or suspected, that he was approached by “three men in black” – Alf Apps, Dan Brock and Ian Davey – to run for the Liberal Party leadership in October 2004, less than a year after former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin had come to power. However, he recounts how he quickly discovered that being actively involved in politics was very different than watching it from the sidelines.

Ignatieff says he should have asked tougher questions before he ran but was lured by the prospect of playing a more active role. He says in hindsight he should have reached a deal with his former friend Bob Rae on leading the Liberal Party, painting a picture of a friendship that now appears to have been forever ruptured.

Ignatieff extols the nature of Canadians and the need for political leaders to get to know the people and the places across the country – not just talk to people on the internet. However, he is less complimentary about ethnic community leaders from “every tribe in Canadian multiculturalism” who tried to broker deals to secure their community’s support in the Liberal leadership contest.

In his book, Ignatieff is also very critical at times of some aspects of his own party.

“I was running to lead a party whose culture of intrigue disgusted me but I was seeking votes from loyalists who wouldn’t vote for me if my disgust were too plain.”

Beyond the fate of his own political career, Ignatieff’s biggest disappointment appears to be with the difficulty he had getting Canadians to care about the health of their own democracy and the Harper government’s refusal to provide Parliament with information about spending or the treatment of Afghan detainees.

“Instead of getting the democracy they deserve, voters end up paying for their own disillusion. They get the democracy their politicians inflict upon them.”